Category Archives: Local Food

By Carmen Black (Editor’s Note: Iowa Farmers deal with an existential reality that is the weather. Regardless of increasingly polarized discussions about climate change, weather affects real people in tangible ways. Carmen recently wrote this piece to members of her … Continue reading →

The marketplace of home vegetable gardens, community supported agriculture, farmers markets, road side vegetable stands, restaurants, retail interests and direct farm sales hasn’t coalesced into a sustainable local food system, and may not. One should never doubt the resilience of … Continue reading →

When people think of local food, most have seasonal sweet corn and tomatoes in mind. That hasn’t changed much in years. The quest for good-tasting food that does no harm has also been around for a long time. Organic food … Continue reading →

The local food movement relies more on kitchens than grocery stores; more on gardens than commercial growers. While use of locally sourced food by many restaurants has changed to include more of it, a local foods movement cannot be sustained … Continue reading →

Nine fantastic breakout sessions are scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 7, during the 2015 Women, Food and Agriculture Network annual conference in Davenport. Click here to learn more about the conference and to register. On Saturday, learn the basics of starting a … Continue reading →

Ingredients for this kale salad were grown within 100 feet of our kitchen. It is as local as food gets. We enjoy garden produce in high summer — when nature’s bounty yields so much food we either preserve or give … Continue reading →

Is the local food movement here to stay? Intellectually, how could it not be? The future must necessarily be one of producing food much closer to where people live, especially as transportation costs escalate, and current food sources in the … Continue reading →

Iowa Can’t Feed the World; Local Producers Can’t Either The frequent jeremiad of big agriculture is about propping them up so Iowa farmers can feed the world. Political speeches at the recent opening of a first of its kind biorational … Continue reading →

There is little agreement about how to apply the principles of sustainable agriculture to the dominant chemical-based farming system and equally robust hegemony of consumer society. It is not clear that these ideas about farming and consumerism even go together. … Continue reading →

It is with a bit of trepidation that I venture into an expository piece about urban chickens. As people continue to move from rural areas to cities, attracted by jobs, apartments, and a type of society reliant upon the aggregation … Continue reading →